In the past, if you wanted to catch up on world news, you would probably look for a newspaper, turn on the television, or access a news website. Today, news can often appear even when you were not looking for it.
This change may seem small, but a large number of people, especially young people, have come to see social media not only as a space for entertainment, but also as one of the main ways to consume information.
HOW WE FIND THE NEWS
According to a report published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford:
“40% of people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four use social media as their main way of accessing news, while only 14% access news directly through the websites or apps of news organizations”
Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford
This shows how the way many young people look for information has changed, and how the process of staying informed does not necessarily begin with the intention of finding out what is happening, but with coming across a news story while browsing social media without actually looking for information. But now that this process has become easier, how do we know which news stories will appear on our feeds?
The truth is that social media does not show every piece of content available to each person. The algorithm selects which topics we see based on our behavior and the interactions we tend to have with certain topics. However, if the algorithm learns what we want to see, it can also end up limiting the variety of topics that appear on our timeline, which leads us to the central question: how does all of this change the way we understand the news?
WHEN THE NEWS COMES WITH A POINT OF VIEW
The University of Oxford report also points to a relevant finding. According to the report, around 51% of people aged eighteen to twenty-four say they pay more attention to news creators and influencers than to traditional news organizations, which only 39% pay more attention to. The study itself points out that some of these creators take on the role of simplifying and decoding news for younger viewers, making more complex events easier to understand. In other words, the news young people consume often does not come directly from a news source, but may instead come from a video of someone explaining an event in a few minutes and adding their own interpretation.
This does not mean that all of this content is less reliable or that traditional news organizations are always impartial, but it does indicate that our relationship with the news is different, since it can reach us through another person’s perspective and interpretation.
Algorithmic curation, combined with a preference for creators, can directly influence the way users understand certain issues, since both factors can increase our exposure to content that confirms our own opinions. A study published in the journal Information Economics and Policy analyzed data from four thousand people in France and investigated the tendency to consume and seek out only news that confirms or aligns with their own political opinions. The research found that consuming news through social media is associated with greater selective exposure to partisan content. From this, it is possible to consider that this type of exposure may also influence the way we understand other news, even when it is not directly related to politics.
When someone spends a lot of time seeing only what they already believe, they may, to some extent, lose part of their critical thinking ability. Not only because they may be reading a news story through someone else’s perspective, but also because they stop looking for other perspectives or seeking out the original source, both important parts of developing critical thinking.
DO WE STILL QUESTION WHAT WE SEE?
Having access to news, however, does not necessarily mean fully understanding it. This happens because when someone consumes only what they already agree with, they stop being exposed to other ways of interpreting a fact. As a result, the perspective they already know may begin to seem like the only possible way to understand things.
This way of perceiving reality is not built in isolation. It can be influenced both by the references a person has and by the environment around them. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu explains this relationship between individuals and their environment through the concept of habitus, in which an individual’s experiences and social environment can influence the way they perceive and interpret the world. Applying this concept to social media, this perception can be connected to repeated exposure to a particular type of content.
When this exposure happens repeatedly, that point of view becomes familiar and, in many cases, the only one they know. As a result, people may begin to question things less, since they become used to understanding an issue from a single perspective, which can lead to a more limited understanding.
It is important that when coming across a news story, people go beyond the first piece of content that appears on their social media feeds. In addition, seeking out perspectives that do not necessarily agree with their own is important, as it allows them to compare different points of view and question information that might initially be accepted simply because it aligns with what they already believe. A short video about an event is not necessarily unreliable, but rather can be a starting point for learning about and staying informed about a news story.
The expansion of social media has made access to information much easier, but it has also changed the way young people understand it, becoming a central space for consuming news while making it necessary to look beyond social media itself. Perhaps the point is not to stop consuming news on social media, but to seek to understand it through other sources as well.
The article above was edited by Sarah Pizarro.
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